Ballpoint pen tips was proxy Li Keqiang used to shame PRC industry to build precision micromachining capabilities (tungsten carbide for high-end munitions etc), TISCO did it in like a year and it upgraded entire PRC metallurgy chain. US struggling to make 100% indigenized gloves 5+ years after covid... is well maybe not something new relative to US industrial decline, but certainly something else. I'm sure US can... but at what cost and all that.

Asking this question only a handful of years after a global pandemic...

If the next pandemic is 50% deadly, not being able to make gloves is surely the canary in the coal mine proving we wouldn't be able to make any other PPE.

And no country can rely on another if it's do or die. Other blocs will keep to themselves.

Looks like most/all manufacturing happens in the SEA/China, so I can see the logic that it could be considered a military risk for it to not be manufactured/possibility to scale manufacturing in America.

Yeah, you should make stuff medical staff needs.

Someone already decided US should. The important question is whether 1B should have gotten the job done, and if not... is it matter of throwing good $$$ after bad $$$... or is it just bad sign 1B wasn't enough.

Yes. Next question

Also what the cost is. If the US really wants to reshore this sort of work then it will become materially poorer.

The story says the US doesn't have the raw material(s): NBR. Not quite sure what that is.

1-200% tariff applied at random if you don't.